NEWS RELEASE: New President for [Sudbury’s] CEMI [Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation]

Sudbury, ON – On February 8, 2012, the Board of Directors of the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) announced the appointment of Mr. Douglas Morrison, Chair of Holistic Mining Practices, as President and CEO of the Corporation effective March 1, 2012. Douglas Morrison brings expertise from a long career in mining, starting at Falconbridge Ltd., then at Inco Ltd. and most recently as Global Mining Leader at Golder Associates.

Since joining CEMI in 2011, he has served as Vice President and now succeeds Dr. Peter K. Kaiser who, after leading CEMI for five years, will focus on his role as Director of the Rio Tinto Centre for Underground Mine Construction, a Division of CEMI. He will also assume an advisory role as Vice President Research at CEMI and resume his research at Laurentian University as Chair for Rock Mechanics and Ground Control.

Sam Marcuson, Vice President of Vale Canada for Base Metals Technology Development and Chairman of the CEMI Board of Directors, welcomes mining veteran, Douglas Morrison, to the role of President and CEO. “With his extensive experience in the Canadian mining industry and more than 15 years in international consulting, he brings a broad understanding of the issues that confront the global mining industry now and into the future. Having worked in the past with CAMIRO, MIRARCO, and other R&D organizations, he will strengthen collaborations in Ontario and across Canada”.

The Board expressed its appreciation and thanked Dr. Kaiser for his success as Founding President during the start-up phase of CEMI, establishing a unique model in support of mining innovation and garnering international recognition for the centre while at the same time engaging the best minds in the mining academic and industrial sectors. Under his leadership, CEMI more than doubled the initial investment by the Ontario Government and CEMI’s founding patrons, Vale, Xstrata Nickel and Laurentian University, laying a sound foundation for CEMI’s future under the new leadership.

This year, CEMI’s cumulative program funding, including leveraged funds, exceeded the $40M threshold. He secured the establishment of the $10 million Rio Tinto Centre for Underground Mine Construction at CEMI. This partnership demonstrates the validity of the adopted approach, that is, to produce a meritorious track record by building successful solution teams. According to Fred Delabbio, General Manager Innovation Underground, Rio Tinto, “the teams assembled by Dr. Kaiser are most effective and most valuable to assist industry in achieving step-change innovations”. For the next two years, Dr. Kaiser will continue to assemble expertise from across Canada and throughout the world in order to accelerate innovative approaches to underground mine construction.

In this manner, CEMI has executed the vision of OMICC (the Ontario Mining Innovation Cluster Council) to strengthen Northern Ontario as a “Centre of Excellence in Mining Innovation”: a centre that provides mining education, services, supplies and research and development for the local and global mining industry. The benefit of CEMI to the private sector and in creating value for our community stake holders was recognized with the 2011 Northern Ontario Business Award (NOBA – Judges Choice Award).

In his new role as President and CEO, Douglas Morrison intends “to engage with the best scientists and engineers the academic community has to offer and engage our industrial experience to convert this knowledge into practical solutions that can be implemented as routine into mining operations. We also want to collaborate with as many mining research organizations as we can so we do not duplicate what has already been done, but also bring fresh minds to bear on problems that the industry has struggled with for many years, combining long years of experience with the youth and enthusiasm of the today’s students for the benefit of the industry as a whole.”

He adds that “we will intensify our focus on deep mining and integrated underground mine engineering, and broaden the support for CEMI from other major mining corporations by expanding our scope beyond underground mining issues to cover aspects of environmental and social impact studies that are now a prerequisite for successful mine permitting and approval of mine closure plans.”

The Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) directs and coordinates step-change innovation in the areas of exploration, deep mining, integrated mine engineering, environment and sustainability for the metal mining industry. With a seasoned team of program directors, CEMI identifies, assesses, funds and manages industry-focused applied research & development projects that extend from geology and engineering to the natural sciences. We recognize innovation is a three-phase process: research, development and implementation (R & D & I). With implementation, we turn innovative ideas into best practices.